Production and service industries are currently under tremendous pressure to become more efficient and productive. Quality control is a central problem in manufacturing process/product/service operating management control and market survival. The classic approach to its development uses available instrumentation, administrative management (standardization, regulation, commission), special operator training within every business unit, and public boards/committees as a demand-side feedback mechanism for essential and consumer commodities.
According to US Quality Forum annual reports, individual end users and customers belong to the silent majority; as a rule, their complaints concern visible failures, but not non-obvious quality standard violations. There are some important quality facets which are beyond an operating manual or customer information booklet.
In advanced industries there are various total quality management and control systems which are mainly based on detailed charts, tables, diagrams, and bureaucratic rules, e.g. E. Deming and M. Baldridge's famous rules which serve as a guide for managers. An international standard for design of quality management systems has been published in ISO-9004, entitled "Quality management and quality system elements--Guidelines", specifically, section 7.3, dealing with customer feedback system on a continuous basis.
There are two general negative features of such well-known "total" quality management programs:
1) the "human factor" in judgement is dominant; PA1 2) an individual customer lacks qualitative objective data for establishing a financial claim for paid-for services. PA1 1) a dedicated, automated signal security monitoring system based on general standard software; PA1 2) instrument-based feedback criteria from supply side (product) and demand side (user) in a measurable format; and PA1 3) a standard communication interface/protocol. PA1 1) Interruptions: every interruption in time units of a second or greater generates a signal relating to a reliability criterion; PA1 2) Takeoff probe interval: between every measured original signal, there is a standard sample takeoff probe interval of six minutes, introduced for stable low-frequent recurrent (economic) stochastic processes; PA1 3) Excess deviation: if 13 or more signal probes per calendar day indicate an excess deviation, this affects the signal quality statistical level, and provides a digital criterion of quality standard (+/-tolerance) disturbance or deviation. If every signal probe "costs" six minutes in a stable random process (as introduced above), 13 or more probes of excess deviation means that the confidence level of process quality per calendar day is less than standard probability (P=0.95). In other words, the confidence level of a general process quality criterion for any recurrent analog signal, when expressed in terms of disutility (invalid probes), is as follows: ##EQU1## where P represents an admissible 5% stochastic disutility (loss of quality) adopted here as a standard statistical limit. PA1 4) Long-term sampling: this is a standard stochastic confidence sampling of approximately 120 hours/1200 probes, introduced here for process quality assessment/presentation; and PA1 5) Four 6-hour data files per calendar day, providing a behavioristic control loop for process signal analysis and the presentation of communication interface logic in digital rectangular matrix standard format.
With regard to modern distributed diagnostic instrumentation, there is a wide gap between expensive up-to-date and sophisticated hardware (highly accurate) and out-of-date metrological software, including that of well-known statistical process control (SPC, as described in the article entitled "SPC May Really Become Process Control", G. Blickley, Control Engineering, July 1988, p. 83-84), which virtually does not work, e.g., steady-state versatile transducers, such as available from Telog, RIS, Metrosonics, etc., which require further PC-oriented processing.
It is a well-known fact that commercial equilibrium in supply and demand sides is hopelessly difficult to achieve in the case of a monopolistic supplier against the ill-defined complaints of an isolated end user.